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AndresLionheart

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Final Fantasy VII Remake

Game Difficulty: 3/10 (on Normal)

Platinum Difficulty: 4/10

Time to Platinum: 72 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

Not my most anticipated game, but something I felt like I had to play. I actually was on the fence before starting it because I was coming off completing another JRPG (Tales of Vesperia) and I didn't want to spend a long time on my next game. I wanted to play Trials of Mana but I couldn't get a physical copy yet, so in the end I played this.

 

To be completely honest, I didn't get too invested. The graphics and music are great, combat is fun, and the voice acting is phenomenal. The characterization is top notch as well, everyone does feel like someone who could actually exist. It's especially apparent for characters who didn't have much development in the original, like Biggs, Wedge and Jessie.

So, if all of that is so good, how did it not get as invested? I'm actually not sure myself. Back when I played Final Fantasy XV, I remember loving every second of it (except chapter 13, of course). That goes triple for when I played Dragon Quest XI. It may be that the lack of exploration and most of the main characters arcs do not happen in Midgar, so I didn't get a chance to care for them as much as I did with those other games.

There are plenty of great moments, both funny and sad, but without a world to explore is harder for me to get into it.

(... I guess I found out which my reasons were, lol.)

 

From the beginning I knew I was not gonna be able to love this game because I knew it was always the Midgar section. They did a fairly good job expanding a bit, but plenty of areas can feel like padding.

 

In terms of combat I was happy to find out that I guess I was kinda good at it? I mean, initially I was just rolling with it. Later when I read other people's comments and how some were having a hard time or having to lower it to Easy I realized I understood it better than I expected. I didn't lose a single battle, and I was never put in a tough situation where I was scrambling for my life. I wasn't doing anything that special, I was simply keeping an eye on HP and abusing the fact that the AI targets the player 95% of the time. When my controlled character was hurt badly or put in a bad spot I would simply switch to someone else and the enemies would leave my other character alone, lol.

It's a pretty fun combat as long as the enemies aren't in the air. Of course you can use one of the ranged characters for flying enemies, but how the melee people are so bad at aerial combat I don't know... especially when aerial combat was so much fun in FFXV.

 

Now, to spoil the story and what I think it's going on:

 

Spoiler

Right before Cloud can meet Aerith a new phenomenon happens. Some ghost looking things interfere on Aerith's path so she doesn't miss her encounter with Cloud, who was slowed down by Sephiroth appearing way earlier than he did in the original game. These things keep happening thought the game every time the events of the original game are being altered. These things are called Whispers, and they are the will of the planet, fate itself trying to fix anything that is not going as it should.

Why does this happen? It's because this Sephiroth is actually from the future (stuff explained in Advent Children, Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus... I think). This Sephiroth knows he loses at the end, so he is trying to rewrite history. By interfering with the party and making them believe that the whispers are a bad thing, he makes the party fight the whispers and beat them, basically leaving the future open for anything. Because of this lots of things are shown already different by the time the group leaves Midgar, and makes it so anything could happen from now on.

 

The reason why this wasn't called Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 1 is because the "Remake" part of the title does not refer to the developers remaking the original FF VII, it refers to Sephiroth remaking how the story goes. Or at least that's what my conclusion was. If it is that, then it a pretty clever and creative thing to do.

Obviously this is the reason why the feelings of the ending are mixed. Those who simply wanted the original game in a modern engine are mad about it, and those like me who are not attached to the original game are more interested in the new direction. After all, the original will always be there for anyone to play. If anything, this made me want something similar for Ocarina of Time. I would love to relive the adventure in that world with altered events.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Before even starting the game I read lots of comments from people saying that Hard difficulty was really hard because of this, this and that. I was extremely baffled when I actually got to it and it was actually easier than when I played the first time through on normal. Regular enemies were getting one shot and bosses were taking me like 3 times less time to beat. I didn't even get wiped a single time in either difficulty. I even had only one character die in battle a single time (and it was because the boss in question had a new mechanic that blocked defensive spells like healing, so I didn't go into the battle with abilities to heal so I didn't need magic. Even with that this death happened very close to the end of the fight and it was immediately solved by reviving him since the thing that blocks the defensive spells is removed on death)

I serious don't know what the heck people are doing. With 2 HP Ups per character (only one on Barret because he is a beast) you never have to fear being killed fast by anything. Being unable to use items to restore MP was also never an issue. My MP was always really high from barely using it (since regular enemies were getting one shot) and because MP regeneration during battle is still a thing).

I was originally not going to get this Platinum because people made Hard mode sound like a complete drag due to how hard it was. Good thing I tried for myself to be sure...

 

Other than the boredom of going through the game again on Hard there is this one event battle that people have a lot of issues with. I'm obviously talking about the VR Simulation Mission against the summons. I got it done on my first try with almost just my regular set up. The "hard" battle against Bahamut and Ifrit became a regular fight against Bahamut because I simply bursted down Ifrit with Limit Breaks before he got to do anything. Bahamut can also use Megaflare for 9999 damage but that is easily mitigated to 5000 damage with the Manaward spell. It was pretty funny to find out the struggles of other people though. It was similar to the feeling of people having trouble with bosses in Souls games. I'm a bad person, so I like to read about the suffering of others =D.

 

Anyway, the other kind of annoying part is getting all the dresses because it requires an extra playthough of Chapter 9, but that is done pretty fast on Easy.

 

The Media Corner

 

Here is my fight against the final boss. I left the trophy for finishing every chapter on Hard for last so that I could pop it with this final fight. Spoilers in the videos, of course

 

Popping the Platinum by beating the last boss on Hard. This thumbnail is a mockup because the real screenshot would be in a boring menu.

 

Edited by AndresLionheart
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  • 2 weeks later...

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Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal

Game Difficulty: 2/10

Platinum Difficulty: 1/10

Time to Platinum: 20 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

Time for shutting-off the brain and satisfying that guilty pleasure. Easy weeb trash after a long RPG is really good for palette cleansing.

 

I was actually surprised to find out that with this I have actually played and completed all Senran Kagura games since Peach Ball is not on PS4 for some reason (which I believe has to do with censorship on Soyny's platform).

 

Anyway, in terms of gameplay I'm happy to announce that this one does go back to the more responsive, fast paced gameplay from Shinovi Versus. Estival Versus was so shit...

I don't remember if this was a gameplay mechanic before but in this one you can cancel attacks with your guard. Why is this a big deal? Because the enemy attacks are telegraphed, letting you parry them with blocks. This becomes increasingly important when fighting other girls that usually try to break off from your combos with their attacks. It also builds so much meter for specials that is all around OP as fuck.

With that mechanic in-between battles it became much more entertaining. Having to pay attention for once is a good thing. Also they kinda streamlined everything a bit to make it more fast paced. Sometimes breaking clothes doesn't go into the lil' cutscene so the battle isn't stopped all the time to watch the same thing over and over again.

There is also this Burst bar that acts as a super mode where you get infinite Aerial Raves and a gigantic attack boost. Pairing that with a level 3 special is devastating. On top of that it ends in an AoE special that is also very strong.

 

Another good step forward is that for the first time the cutscenes have the girls actually looking at each other standing in an actual place! It used to be that they would just be standing there looking to the front which made cutscenes so boring. Because of this I did sit through and pay attention to the story. On every other game I skipped everything due to the boring, low budget presentation.

Don't get me wrong, it is still pretty low budget since all that changed is where they are standing. The animations are still the same, the locations are mostly the same, etc. There is also a LOT of story presented through still backgrounds with text detailing everything like if it was a book. This is the next part they need to put some more budget into I think. Having to imagine what the heck is going on based on what I'm being told is for book-readers. If I wanted to imagine things I would read a book. I'm a dumb player of videogames, you can't expect me to have imagination! Of course I'm joking. I understand that these games don't make sell that much so they cannot afford to spend in cinematography and cutscenes. It would be nice, though...

One curious aspect of these "not-as-low-budget" cutscenes is that they made my PS4 fan spin at speeds I haven't heard before... I played God of War, Spider-Man, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, none of those made my PS4 do any extra noise, but for some reason this game does. I guess it is not well optimized. Another point in favor of this theory is that it crashed twice when I tried to start a mission in Franctic Mode (the girl strips to her underwear right away for massive attack increase at the cost of all their defense)

 

So how's the story? Let's say it had more depth than I have expected. It's nothing amazing but at least all the characters have their backstory and reasons for wanting to be a shinobi. They are all mostly sad tales as is usual from most anime. Orphans, crazy parents, being poor, being adopted and having a brother that hates you because he think you took his rightful place, etc.

Good thing is that since this is a remake of the first game there are way fewer characters to get to know. That sounds like a bad thing, right? But that was one of the things I didn't like about the newer games. There are SOOOOO many characters that all of them end up blending together. With so many they cannot put as much care into each one because they have to many. That's why I liked the cast from Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkuni more. Fewer characters, more time spent on developing them.

What I think may be new is the "evil" story. It's the story mode for the oppossing school. I initially thought this was gonna be the same story from the other point of view but it is actually the same story told in a different way. It changes certain story beats to better suit them for playing as the other side, basically telling a non-canon version of the events. The final boss for them is also whatever compared to the final boss of the "good" school.

 

I used to main Asuka in these but this time I switched camp. I was won over by Ikaruga. Not just due to her looks (which I like, although Yomi got very close to beating her there) but because her playstyle was the most fun. Her attacks chain into each other fluidly, and she does the cool samurai shit of slashing so fast that the attacks happen after she is done doing them. Who I completely hated playing as was Mirai... holy shit what a clunky-ass character.

Here are some images for reference ;)

 

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 Ikaruga and Yomi art from this game (top). The image below is something I happened to see while looking for that other art. It has nothing to do with this game, I just found it too good to not share... It's actually 2 different images put together. The edit is not that great, but dang do they look good.

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Overall the game is very easy on Normal difficulty, so I bet it's probably a cakewalk on easy. There are also these Secret Growth Medicines that help with leveling up. They are very easy to find and increase levels very fast. This makes overleveling quite easy, which in term makes the game even more braindead if that's what you want. Personally I only used a few when I was going into the Free Missions (the only mode you can choose which girl to play as) because Ikaruga barely had any fights during the story. She was level 5, so I upped her to level 20. From there she naturally got to max level (50) by the time I only had 1 more missions to go, so it worked out really well.

 

I was pleasantly surprised with this game. I wasn't gonna buy it due to the removal of a mode to please Sony. The mode taken out was not the issue, the issue is giving away to the complaints of people who are not even the target audience. I hate that shit. I ended up buying it because it was heavily discounted. I know the Switch and Steam versions are uncensored, but without the trophies I don't feel compelled enough to play these games. I like the fanservice but that alone isn't enough for me.

 

I hope that going into the next game some bigger changes happen, because up to this point they have been reusing way too much from previous games. It goes back to the very first Vita game... It's time for a new engine, hopefully one with more detailed... animations.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

What can I say... it's even easier than any other Senran Kagura game. This time around there is no grind involved. In previous games you had to grind some money to buy everything on the shop, or maybe grind to level up characters. This time there isn't anything of that sort, which is good. Grinding for the sake of grinding is never a thing I want to do, it doesn't add anything of value, only time loss.

 

As I said before, I only got Ikaruga to level 20 through the medicines I randomly picked up without noticing and from there she got to 50 by herself, which is all you need in terms of levels. I played with a list of where there secret documents are so I wouldn't need to waste time exploring the same areas over and over or having to redo missions. That's pretty much the only thing you have to be aware of while playing, and maybe the 100 parries, but unless you are playing the game in mega easy (or are just plain bad at it) it should happen naturally. I had over 300 parries naturally when I was done with the Platinum.

Edited by AndresLionheart
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Lost Sphear

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 3/10

Time to Platinum: 38 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I've had this one lingering around for a while. It looked like something I would enjoy because of the setting and the simple graphics. Sadly, it only looked good...

 

To be fair, it's a functioning game. Everything works and there are plenty of systems going around for the RPG player. However, there may be a bit too many things for its own good.

To begin with, there are 8 characters, which means that most of them get barely any exposure during the story. The only ones that have some significance are the main 2 (Kanata and Lumina) and to a, lesser extent, Van. The other 5 add very little to the tale. I feel like they should have limited it to just 4.

Everyone has their own special things they can bring to combat, of which 80% go to waste because of how specific or useless they are. All those resources spent in stuff like that could have been used to polish other areas and the other characters.

 

This game was a rare case where I ended up not caring anymore so I lowered the difficulty just to blast through everything. It's not like it was difficult on normal, but the difficulty did spike hard during 2 specific bosses. One of them uses lots of status effects at a point in the game where you don't have an effective  way to deal with it, and the other had massive dodge rate, making me miss 75% of my attacks.

I did still read the dialog, though. The game takes itself way too seriously. All the way through I had this feeling like they were trying really hard to tell an epic tale filled with tragedy and sadness. Suffices to say that it fell flat.

 

At about half of the game I just wanted it to end...

It has 2 endings (you simply choose at the end which one you want). Both end pretty bad.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Thankfully the Platinum doens't ask for much. There are so many more things that they could have required to make this one hell of a slog, but they didn't.

The most boring part I'd say was using all of the Paradigm Drives. This requires having almost all of the skills for the characters and doing them in combat. It takes like 1 and a half hour to do once you have all the skills, but it's still boring nonetheless.

 

Several trophies have wrong descriptions, too. Like the one that requires eating 100 different foods when there aren't even 100 different ones. What it really wants is simply eating 100 of any food.

 

If it wasn't for the fact that the Platinum was this simple I would have dropped it at the moment I mentioned before...

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Lost Sphear at least is more interesting than RIME. That game I wasn't a big fan of, walking simulators that put in good graphics and tell a story in abstract form just aren't my thing.

 

Just goes to show that games that are simple and straightforward aren't always the best.

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19 hours ago, Spaz said:

Lost Sphear at least is more interesting than RIME. That game I wasn't a big fan of, walking simulators that put in good graphics and tell a story in abstract form just aren't my thing.

 

Just goes to show that games that are simple and straightforward aren't always the best.

Yeah. There's no harder platinum that the ones for games that are boring as shit. Lost Sphear didn't look boring, though. If it did I wouldn't have even tried it at all.

 

The thing is that simple and straightforward games are usually short. It doesn't matter if its only like 5 or 10 hours. But when the thing goes over 20 hours it is a drag.

I bet it was even worse for a walking simulator... something like that would put me to sleep...

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2 hours ago, AndresLionheart said:

Yeah. There's no harder platinum that the ones for games that are boring as shit. Lost Sphear didn't look boring, though. If it did I wouldn't have even tried it at all.

 

The thing is that simple and straightforward games are usually short. It doesn't matter if its only like 5 or 10 hours. But when the thing goes over 20 hours it is a drag.

I bet it was even worse for a walking simulator... something like that would put me to sleep...

 

The thing with me is I can do difficult platinums if they are 5 - 15 hours long, doesn't matter how many retries I have to do. But throw in a 20, 50, 100 hour slog of boring grinding, it becomes hard to keep me motivated to push forward.

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Yoku's Island Express

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 3/10

Time to Platinum: 10 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

The first time I've heard this was a pinball metroidvania I was like "wut?". I find the gameplay of pinball fun, but I need some sort of objective for it to be engaging. Pinball games are usually about high scores... that's nerd shit.

I did play a lot of Pokemon Pinball, both the one from GBC and the one from GBA. Those are good examples of pinball games with an objective. Those games revolve around catching pokemon, evolving them, and finding and beating bosses. Another fun experience with pinball came from Sonic Spinball back in the day. In that one the objective is exploring the table to find the chaos emeralds to open the way to the boss of the level.

 

In Yoku's Island Express it's all about exploring a beautiful island as a dung beetle carrying a ball (it's normally white, but you can color it to be dung if you want). You are initially supposed to be the new postman, but after learning that the island deity got infected by something called the "God Slayer" you are tasked to finding the island chiefs to help heal the dude.

 

The island is not that big but it is densely packed. I have no idea how someone gets around to designing a connected place like Mokumana Island. Every corner of the map makes sense, and all of it is decorated with detail going all the way into the background.

Most of it is divided into walking sections with some pinball thingies here and there for mobility, and then there are sections of distinctive pinball tables with the usual ramps and bumpers.

 

Quests do tell you the general area to go, but the path isn't always as clear. On top of that there are unlockable abilities that are required to traverse to later areas of the game. I guess it's more of a metroid-like than a metroidvania since there aren't RPG mechanics.

 

The few bosses that the game has are kind of a letdown, though. There are only 3, and they don't do anything to protect themselves. They just sit there and wait for you to beat them. There isn't even any urgency because having the ball fall between the flippers has no negative effect. In a game like Sonic Spinball having you sonic fall meant having to go back to the boss room, a punishment that was well worth it (I think the boss regened its health as well).

That's an aspect that could have been better. There are plenty of checkpoints and you can always select "restart from checkpoint" from the pause menu, so there is no reason not to make the bosses a bit more punishing when making mistakes.

 

Since we are on the topic of needed improvements, this game could have used better fast travel options. There are these things called Beelines that let you move fast through long stretches, but, while you can drop from each little section of the beeline at will, you cannot go into the beeline at any point. This means having to still trek back through portions the map to reach one of these stations.

I understand that not having a generous fast travel system means that the player learns the map better, but some concessions could have been made. Maybe make it a lategame unlockable ability, like in Dark Souls, or maybe make it so that at least you have a way to instantly go back to the main hub, which is where all the beeline stations can be accessed.

 

As soon as I started playing this game I experienced had a happy feeling. When I saw the world paired with the music I couldn't help but smile. It's a really fun game that surprised me with its polished graphics and overall experience. It only had little mishaps in loading them map when going too fast from area to area with the beelines.

Yet another strong recommendation for my list of cool indie games with fun plats. So far those games are: The Messenger, Mark of the Ninja, and Yoku's Island Express.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Similar to Monster Boy and the Curse Kingdom, there are in-game ways to track collectables on the map. Each area hides a tracker for their Wickerlings, and there is a dude that sells a map to all the treasure chests. Since all of that is easily accessible, my only advice would be to collect the scarabs along the way. I didn't know this was a thing until way later when I checked the trophies thoroughly.

These are actually marks in the pinball tables that require doing certain things a few times to fully activate them. The tracker for it is automatically acquired when there are 10 left, so it's important to do them along the way to minimize the treks back to every single table to double check if you got them or not. What sucks more is that the scarab is erased from the table when completed, so you could not notice if you have some of them or not on a second visit. Thankfully I had done quite a bit of them, so when I was on clean-up I only had to get like 5 more for the last 10 to get marked on the map.

 

Other than that it's pretty straight forward. Maybe the mushroom quest can be a bit annoying since it only tells you the general area it wants to be planted in. I used a video guide for it because I didn't feel like wandering around in a game without easily accessible fast travel.

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  • 1 month later...

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Final Fantasy VIII Remastered

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 4/10

Time to Platinum: 39 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I was supposed to play this remaster way back when it came out. I was recording it with live commentary and stuff but I didn't feel like keeping that going, so I waited. I also wanted it to be a milestone but the 75th Plat was so far off at the time. Without noticing I got to 74 plats so I had to do it.

 

Final Fantasy VIII is a game a hold very close to my heart. It was the game that got me into RPGs. The game that showed me that there is more to games than just jumping on shit or killing stuff. One would think that that game would be Final Fantasy VII, however for some reason I missed that one back then.

I remember walking into a game store and buying this only because it came in 4 fucking CDs (which was something new to me) and because the dude looked cool af (I'm of course talking about Squall).

As anyone who has played FF8 can tell: my username comes from this game. While Squall's last name is actually Leonhart, his best sword is called Lionheart, and his strongest attack is called Lion Heart. I'm also a Leo who loved Saint Seiya when he was a kid, and from there comes Aioria who was also cool af. All of this stuff made me gravitate toward lions.

 

I haven't played this since around the time I created my Youtube account, which was... lemme see... May 9, 2006. My first video uploaded was "8-Hit Renzokuken to Lionheart" (yes, Lion Heart is not spelled right) on September 21, 2006. I remember I was playing it on an emulator that could run games off of CDs.

It's been 14 years, and holy shit did I not remember A LOT of things.

 

The first time I played it I was like 11, the second time I was 17. I loved it since the first time I played but I certainly didn't know that much english, so the story flew over my head. I thought I read all of it when I played it at the age of 17 but I guess I didn't. This time though I got fully invested in it and I will hopefully not forget so much again (I should probably play it more often, too).

 

I can now see why people think this game is not that good. The story can be kind of a mess at times, as well as kinda dumb. I will not hold back on SPOILERS, btw.

To begin with, all the time compression shit explains something and nothing at the same time. All that made up stuff that conveniently works as some guy theorized is a bit much. On top of that all the party members (except Rinoa) happened to grow up in the same orphanage? like what are the chances of 5 people all being raised in the same orphanage only to then get separated and end up finding each other to fight for the same cause?

 

The whole thing of Squall not wanting to be close to people just because when he was a kid he got separated from the person he loved the most and suffering from it is also kind of dumb. It's fine logic for a young kid, but not for an adult.

His coldness does get into dumb territory at points, too. Like when Rinoa ends up in a coma and he is desperately doing everything possible to get to be with her again because he realized he loved her, but then when she is finally on her feet again and asks him for a nice and cozy hug he acts all cold. Then she wants to sit on his lap to be close to him but he keeps trying to get her to sit on her seat.

I know he is supposed to be this guy that can't read the situation when it comes to human interaction but holy hell, man, he got on my nerves a few times, lol.

 

Rinoa is pretty much the reason why I have a preference for women with long black hair. Funny enough when I was 15 I had a girlfriend that wore something similar to Rinoa's blue... coat (is that called a coat?) to our first date, however this girl's coat was yellow.

Now that I got to understand more of the game I liked her even more. She is playful and naive at time, but she is always doing her best to accomplish her goals. I also learned she had something going on with Seifer a year prior to the events of the game o.o

 

Since I played this before, I wanted to try something different this time around: a "Low Level Game". It's basically not leveling up throughout the whole game.

To anyone that doesn't know how this game works this could sound like a difficult task when it's quiety the opposite. Enemies level up as the party does, but they scale waaaay harder. The difference in stats has to be made through the junction system. When you don't level up, the enemies stay weak, yet you can still attain max stats through different means.

Here's how my Level 7 Squall looked:

 

Spoiler

 

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I didn't even have to go that hard on min-maxing. I was gonna only do it for Str, but then the RPG perfectionist in me kicked in and I ended up going around the world getting most of the best spells for each stat.

 

I have to say that battles do get ridiculously easy and pointless. It was still fun to see enemies go boom, especially the superbosses.

 

Talking of superbosses, here is my epicly long and arduous battle against the strongest superboss, Omega Weapon: 

 

I didn't intend on it going like this, tbh. That was the first time I ever attempted this boss because I never found him back in the day. Technically I only finished the game once before because I would normally get all the way to the end of the third disc and never go to the final dungeon. That's something I always do with Paper Mario as well.

 

Most of what I wrote is more like personal experiences than thoughts... but to go a bit more into what the game offers:

 

I know that a lot of people hate this one for a few reasons. One is because it is not Final Fantasy VII, that was a tough act to follow; the other is the junction system, which incentivizes not using strong spells to instead junction them to stats. Spells are also not even as good as physical attacks. Squall with 220 Str was doing the same damage with a regular attack as Rinoa with 230 Mag was doing while casting an Ultima... I still built Rinoa for Mag yet I never utilized the idea I had of using the Triple buff (casting 3 spells in one turn) along the ability that only uses 1 stock of the spell while using Triple. Not like anything matters much when you have an optimized Squall in a low level game.

 

One of the things that is universally praised, though, is the music. The tracks may be MIDI, but all of them are bangers. Force Your Way, the boss battle theme is my personal favorite, although the final boss themes (yeah, all of them) are amazing as well. The thing with those is that you only get to hear them that one time, though.

 

Back then with a 14" TV the game looked amazing. The pre-rendered backgrounds along with the big character models made it look way better than anything else at the time. Now with higher resolutions the backgrounds look like crap. Since the source code for this game was lost there isn't much that can be done without fully remaking everything, something that we all know will never happen.

 

Another loved aspect is the best mini-game in an RPG, Triple Triad. It's a fairly simple card game, but the fun of it is going around the world collecting all the cards. When more rules are added it does turn into something more similar to chess. The way to win is baiting and outplaying your opponent.

I had never completed that before, so I took the time to do it this time, even though it is not required for a trophy. Here's proof =):

 

Spoiler

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The "star" on the top right means that you have everything.

 

Along with getting all the cards I learned about RNG manipulation. Different regions of the world utilize different sets of rules. Most of them are fine expect for "Random". This rules makes it so the cards picked for playing are random. This means playing with shitty cards, which of course makes winning a lot harder. With RNG manipulation people found ways to ensure that Random is abolished when a region is mixing rules with another region. It's kind of a long and boring story, so I won't go into details. Just know that I had fun learning to do it.

 

Overall I ended up learning lots of new things, especially things that allow to completely break the game. Even if the story is not the best the game offers a lot of freedom for those who like getting into the nerdy parts of RPGs. Suffices to say that I always recommend this one ;) .

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

This list was dialed down from the original Steam achievements soooooooo hard. It used to ask pretty much 100% of everything. Now it asks for the bare minimum + 2 end game sidequests.

 

For me the worst part was getting the 1000 enemy kills. Since I was doing it without leveling up I was avoiding every non-required battle. By the time I only had the final dungeon left I was way off that 1000 number. Thankfully the game does count Carding enemies (using an ability that transforms enemies into cards, which makes it so regular enemies don't give Exp but still give AP for summons to learn abilities) as kills. I noticed this because when I checked everyone's kills I saw that Rinoa had over 200 (she was the one who Carded enemies). I also had 250 kills with Seifer from the first mission (another strategy in low level playthroughs).

 

The Platinum time could have been way shorter if I didn't spend time min-maxing Squall and getting the best weapons for my 3 main characters. I'd say 30 hours should be more accurate. 25 if using God Mode the whole time.

 

As I mentioned before, I wanted this one as a milestone because the name of the plat is "Lionheart" =).

 

Since lately I've been placing images and videos along the previous sections I see no point having a section for media. So I will simply start placing the platinum pop videos at the end of the Platinum thoughts section.

 

The whole final stretch of the game, including all cutscenes and battles. All of this went horribly from what I had planned. First I got super bad luck with the random initial party, so I killed the useless people.

Then I didn't remember the battles all happen without interruption, otherwise I would have casted a Triple right off the bat on Rinoa.

Then I didn't even know what Curse did (it makes it so you can't use Limit Breaks, apparently), so I waste time trying to get a Limit Break when it's not possible.

Then I forgot to use Aura on Squall before making everyone invincible (with an Aura it's easier to get a finisher).

And finally, at the very end I didn't know that when the boss starts talking it means she has no more HP, I read about that after doing the fight. If I knew I wouldn't have showered her with Renzokukens, lol.

Edited by AndresLionheart
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With how many kids back then who played Final Fantasy VII circa 1997 - 1999, I must of been the only kid at that time who had a Nintendo 64 and played the living shit out of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye 007.

 

I suspect you and I are about the same age.

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10 hours ago, Spaz said:

With how many kids back then who played Final Fantasy VII circa 1997 - 1999, I must of been the only kid at that time who had a Nintendo 64 and played the living shit out of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye 007.

 

I suspect you and I are about the same age.

I wish I could have played the shit out of OoT but N64 games were too expensive so I could only rent it.

The PS1 was so heavily pirated that everyone had it because games cost like $1.

 

Due to this I ended up playing way more games on PS1. I think I only had like 6 games for N64, the rest were all rentals. Later, as an adult with a job, I bought all the N64 games I loved from my childhood (Paper Mario, OoT, MM, Smash, Kirby 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, and a few others).

 

I was the only kid with an N64, too.

I'm gonna guess we are both in our 30s =p

 

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9 hours ago, AndresLionheart said:

I wish I could have played the shit out of OoT but N64 games were too expensive so I could only rent it.

The PS1 was so heavily pirated that everyone had it because games cost like $1.

 

Due to this I ended up playing way more games on PS1. I think I only had like 6 games for N64, the rest were all rentals. Later, as an adult with a job, I bought all the N64 games I loved from my childhood (Paper Mario, OoT, MM, Smash, Kirby 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, and a few others).

 

I was the only kid with an N64, too.

I'm gonna guess we are both in our 30s =p

 

My parents had a strict policy of not allowing me to have too many games. I had around 5 - 10 N64 games, which my mom and dad both paid over $60 for each. It wasn't uncommon back then to see N64 games go for over $60, so in many respects you had to pay more for them.

 

The PS2 was the first console that I actually went and paid for including all the games I had on it. The original God of War was given to me as a present back in early 2005 but otherwise I ended up paying for them on my own. I still rented games at Blockbuster because I didn't want to pay $50 - 60 for a game that was going to be disappointing. This was still a time when the internet wasn't a big thing in console gaming, certain games like Halo 2 for the Xbox, Ratchet and Clank 3 for the PS2 and such had online.

 

Nowadays I got so many games on Steam and there's the 50 - 100 game backlog that serves as my own thread here on this website, including all the games I've done on my profile. Such a far cry compared to 20 years ago, where I was happy to see one Final Fantasy game and just a handful of N64 games.

 

Sadly I never had the PS1, so I missed out on Final Fantasy VII and many others. I did play Final Fantasy X on the PS2, loved it for what it was. I don't have that kind of time anymore to spend hundreds of hours on a game like that nowadays.

Edited by Spaz
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Ratchet & Clank

Game Difficulty: 3/10 (on Normal)

Platinum Difficulty: 3/10

Time to Platinum: 25 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

With the announcement of the PS5 game I got curious about this series. I don't think I ever heard of it back in the PS2 days. I think it wasn't until the PS3 game or collection happened that I knew of their existence.

 

I'm definitely not that much into shooting things. I've been trying a few FPSs lately and I can't say I feel much for them. My only experience with 3rd person shooters was with Gears of War 3 (a friend had a 360. I played Horde mode with him once). Since Ratchet & Clank looked a bit more into the mascot platformer with silly weapons I wanted to give it a shot (on top of finding a new physical copy for $7).

 

Thanks to the cartoony characters and dumb humor I did enjoy it much more than other games about shooting stuff. The style of humor is much like Pixar movies. It wasn't as charming as Spyro the Dragon on the remake, but it did the job.

The story also felt very much like something I could have seen in a Pixar movie. Ratchet wanted to be a ranger because he has heart, but he wasn't accepted because he lacked the... everything else, or so did Captain Quark say.

 

Exploring each stage reminded me of Spyro, too. It's a small area with a main story path and a few side areas to explore. Going for the side objectives was actually required at times because it yielded new equipment needed to advance in later areas.

 

I had heard that the weapons were inventive but most of them felt fairly standard to me. The only ones that I would say are wacky and interesting are the Sheepinator (transform enemies into inoffensive sheep. Later when upgraded it can transform them into goats that fart transforming power into other enemies to transform them as well) and the Groovitron (makes enemies dance, which doesn't let them attack and makes them take increased damage). The others can be easily described, such as: "a pistol", "a rocket launcher", "a grenade", etc. That's how you can easily tell which ones are creative and which ones are standard.

 

The game is called Ratchet & Clank, however poor Clank kinda goes underutilized. He has a few areas that only he can access, which are puzzle oriented, but these are very few and far between. One way to give him more presence would have been to make him comment more often on whatever Ratchet is doing, especially if some snarky or smartass comments are the choice. Kinda like how Kazooie is always shitting on Banjo in Banjo-Kazooie.

 

I wouldn't put this game on any top list of mine but I enjoyed what I played. I may or may not pick the PS5 game on release. That will depend on what else is up for grabs at the time (looking at you Spider-Man). Regardless, I will be checking the new one out at some point (probably when I can find it for a good price =P).

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

I checked the guide before starting, so I knew what difficulty was given to it. I still was surprised on how easy the "Challenge Mode" was. I guess that with a name like that instead of simply "New Game +" I expected a bit more. I actually had an even easier time during Challenge Mode.

 

Still, not everything is fun and games for everyone here. I've read the thread about the Groovitron related trophy, and not everyone had it as straight. The trophy in question requires making every enemy dance with the Groovitron. There is no way to track this so the easiest way is do it with every single enemy during the 2nd run (you don't get the game until after a few stages, at which point some enemies had already been lost). I immediately started using it when I got it because it's OP af, and then I got the trophy during the Challenge run on the... ahmmm... 4th or 5th stage when I used it on some fish. I was a bit nervous about that trophy so after it popped I steamrolled over everything else in my way.

 

Grinding bolts for weapon upgrades was not necessary thanks to completely annihilating everything. In Challenge Mode you can get a multiplier for killing enemies without getting hit, with the maximum being 20x. I could get there and maintain it for a good while, on top of also having it at around 11 to 15x other times. By the time I got to the final boss I was 1m over the required amount to buy everything. I did have to rethread the final area one more time for enough Raritarium to unlock every weapon perk, though.

 

The one thing that I had to grind for was character and weapon levels. Weapons are really easy because smacking the final boss increases their experience super fast. For the character levels I sat on a high ledge in Rilgar where some amoeba-like enemies infinitely spawn. Since I already had all weapons maxed out I activated the unlimited ammo cheat along the faster game speed (which I wish I discovered sooner. Faster speed makes it more fun). You can't collect what the enemies drop so every 5 minutes or so I had to Quit and reload because the performance starts to tank, making it a slower grind.

Edited by AndresLionheart
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1 hour ago, AndresLionheart said:

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Ratchet & Clank

Game Difficulty: 3/10 (on Normal)

Platinum Difficulty: 3/10

Time to Platinum: 25 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

With the announcement of the PS5 game I got curious about this series. I don't think I ever heard of it back in the PS2 days. I think it wasn't until the PS3 game or collection happened that I knew of their existence.

 

Ratchet and Clank was one of the premier series in the early 2000s. I rented these games from Blockbuster in those days because I didn't have a job until I was 16 years old. Enjoyed them a lot, same with Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper.

 

Maybe you weren't much into PlayStation then?

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56 minutes ago, Spaz said:

Ratchet and Clank was one of the premier series in the early 2000s. I rented these games from Blockbuster in those days because I didn't have a job until I was 16 years old. Enjoyed them a lot, same with Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper.

 

Maybe you weren't much into PlayStation then?

Oh I was pretty much into PlayStation. Just like what happened with PS1, PS2 was heavily pirated over here. I had a Gamecube first, but since games were expensive I only had a few of them. A pirated PS2 game went for about $3. I just don't seem to remember ever seeing them along stacks of other games. The same goes for Sly Cooper and Jax & Daxter.

 

Maybe the stores around my area didn't care about having those because they were seen as "kiddy" when the console was seen as the one for the "cool kids". You could always find PES, God of War, Dragon Ball, Naruto and boring games with guns, but for the more niche stuff it was tougher. I remember I had to ask in the same store several times for Tales of the Abyss until they finally decided to have it ?

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Just now, AndresLionheart said:

Oh I was pretty much into PlayStation. Just like what happened with PS1, PS2 was heavily pirated over here. I had a Gamecube first, but since games were expensive I only had a few of them. A pirated PS2 game went for about $3. I just don't seem to remember ever seeing them along stacks of other games. The same goes for Sly Cooper and Jax & Daxter.

 

Maybe the stores around my area didn't care about having those because they were seen as "kiddy" when the console was seen as the one for the "cool kids". You could always find PES, God of War, Dragon Ball, Naruto and boring games with guns, but for the more niche stuff it was tougher. I remember I had to ask in the same store several times for Tales of the Abyss until they finally decided to have it 1f611.png

 

In America Sony advertised those old Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank commercials on TV. They were the so called mascots of the Playstation 2, although I never felt Sony had an official mascot for their console. Crash Bandicoot was already out because Naughty Dog moved on to Jak.

 

I think you guys in Argentina got this stuff second hand, in the United States in a lot of retail stores Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank games were practically plastered whenever you walked into the Playstation 2 section of the video game area. Didn't matter if it was GameStop, Walmart, Best Buy, Blockbuster, EB Games, Target or where ever.

 

A lot of kids saw those old commericals on TV, and obviously they wanted Ratchet and Clank. That's how it worked in America.

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1 minute ago, Spaz said:

 

In America Sony advertised those old Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank commercials on TV. They were the so called mascots of the Playstation 2, although I never felt Sony had an official mascot for their console. Crash Bandicoot was already out because Naughty Dog moved on to Jak.

 

I think you guys in Argentina got this stuff second hand, in the United States in a lot of retail stores Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank games were practically plastered whenever you walked into the Playstation 2 section of the video game area. Didn't matter if it was GameStop, Walmart, Best Buy, Blockbuster, EB Games, Target or where ever.

 

A lot of kids saw those old commericals on TV, and obviously they wanted Ratchet and Clank. That's how it worked in America.

I see what the problem could have been now. You see, game stores over here didn't carry a single legit game. The console may not have officially released either. I remember seeing ads on TV about Zelda Wind Waker and Mario Sunshine, but nothing PlayStation related. The bigger toy stores that usually had all the legit toys always had Gamecube kiosks with the demo discs and they sold GC games as well. When it came to PS they had the console and like 3 games, lol. They knew they weren't gonna sell shit. I don't think they even sold many consoles because theirs were not pirated, so people didn't want them.

 

Renting games wasn't a thing anymore starting that gen due to piracy as well. Gamecube games weren't pirated but so few people had that console that it wasn't worth the investment.

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9 minutes ago, AndresLionheart said:

I see what the problem could have been now. You see, game stores over here didn't carry a single legit game. The console may not have officially released either. I remember seeing ads on TV about Zelda Wind Waker and Mario Sunshine, but nothing PlayStation related. The bigger toy stores that usually had all the legit toys always had Gamecube kiosks with the demo discs and they sold GC games as well. When it came to PS they had the console and like 3 games, lol. They knew they weren't gonna sell shit. I don't think they even sold many consoles because theirs were not pirated, so people didn't want them.

 

Renting games wasn't a thing anymore starting that gen due to piracy as well. Gamecube games weren't pirated but so few people had that console that it wasn't worth the investment.

 

Wow. This is news to me.

 

All the big retailers back in the early - mid 2000s promoted anything relating to the Playstation 2, because it was the most successful and best selling console there was. Nintendo was starting to slip into the niche category starting this generation, mostly due to their design choices and the way they were marketing themselves. If you wanted guns and Halo like gameplay, it was either Playstation 2 or the original Xbox.

 

Ratchet and Clank was always a series that catered to a younger audience, but as a teenager I enjoyed the games. I just find it funny that there was nothing PlayStation related where you were, because it was practically the opposite for me. There was tons of stuff on Playstation 2, the Nintendo Gamecube, while there was still plenty, not so much.

 

I stuck with the Nintendo Wii for a few years. Enjoyed the Mario Kart games, Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 were very solid. Afterwards I practically dropped them for the Xbox 360. Then I dropped Microsoft for the same reasons I dropped Nintendo.

 

I hope Insomniac Games can still hold on to their Ratchet and Clank franchise. Honestly I looked more forward to the reboot than I did with Marvel's Spider-Man. Wasn't all too impressed with Spider-Man, but that's another topic for another time.

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Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

Game Difficulty: 4/10

Platinum Difficulty: 6/10

Time to Platinum: 25 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

In Ratchet & Clank there are Hoverboard Races. These races a pretty simple, requiring going through the track smashing boxes and doing tricks to fill the boost meter to then use it to go faster. Driving and breaking boxes made me feel like finally checking out the remake of Crash Team Racing. I've had this one since release but never tried it.

 

I played the original back in 1999. I can't say for sure but I think I did get all the Platinum relics along with beating all the time trials. I remember playing it with kids around the summer house and that they were impressed that I could drift everywhere, even on straights. This one and Mario Kart were my initiation into the realm of Kart racers, and since I picked them up when I was still young I did develop an affinity to them.

 

I'm not into other type of racing games at all. Try to make me play Gran Turismo or Need for Speed, which are very different kinds of racing games on their own, and I will get bored within a few races. Kart racers are special because of the items, wacky courses and drift mechanics.

 

In term of mechanics this game is extremely different from Mario Kart. It is definitely a lot more technical. Instead of simply drifting you also have to manually pull off the boost during the drifts. That's just the beginning because then you also have to add the boost pad mechanics which play off of the drift boosts as well. It takes a bit to adjust, but when you get the hang of it it feels really satisfying. At the same time, when you fuck up something it feels really bad, lol.

 

One thing that this game and Diddy Kong Racing have over Mario Kart is the Adventure Mode. While Diddy Kong Racing's is better, Crash Team Racing still tries to tie everything with an explorable overworld. It's not as expansive and filled with secrets as DKR's but it's at least more than what Mario Kart ever tried.

This simple addition of a single player mode did wonders since you don't always have people to play with. Nowadays that effects are severely diminished due to internet play, but I still appreciate it.

 

What I don't appreciate is the stupid way to unlock stuff. Collecting coins and buying unlockables is a fine progression loop, but that goes out the fucking window when anything you want to unlock is tied to a stupid Fortnite-style shop... Who the fuck at Activision had this brilliant idea? Sell the stupid coins if you want but let me buy what I want when I want. The prices are not high enough to the point where you couldn't get something by playing normally before the rotation changes, so the system doesn't make sense.

The whole idea of limited time items is to trick people into buying currency for something before it goes away. If the time is so long that you can easily grind the coins in a few races the whole thing is pointless.

Then there is also this random message at the bottom of the screen of the main menu. Instead of sharing some news related to the game it said some political stuff that has no place in this or any game. I'm not against what the message said, far from that. It's just that stuff like that shouldn't be in a game that people play to relax and forget about the real world.

 

From when the game came out a lot of patches happened. It got worse with the stupid storefront but they did also patch in some quality of life stuff. For example the ability to choose any driving style regardless of the character being used and improvements to the loading times (which are still fucking atrocious, btw)

 

I bought it on release because of the price point. Not only did they remake the original tracks, they also remade the PS2 game tracks (and I didn't even know there was a PS2 Crash Team Racing, lol). It released with 32 racing tracks and like 8 battle mode tracks, then they added a few more (like 6) racing tracks at some point, which I guess were free because I had them. That's a lot of content for a racing game.

I didn't try the online because I don't have PS Plus, although I will guess that it's probably not as fun as Mario Kart for the casual player. With so many advanced techniques the good players can easily completely dominate a casual one. Not like winning in Mario Kart is harder, but the skill gap is still shorter.

 

Even with the money-grubby parts Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is still a package worth the price.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Another one of those you hear horror stories about. Thankfully for me I have quite a bit of experience on this kind of thing, so I didn't struggle at any point. I think the thing that took the longest to beat was the final boss of adventure mode on Hard, that probably took a good 10 minutes worth of attempts. Now that I think about it... I think what took me the longest was winning the battle mode that you earn points by hitting enemies with items. I set it to easy against 7 AIs and I kept losing by a few points, lol. I was terrible with the items. For the other battle modes I reduced the amount of AIs.

 

What people usually cite as the hardest part is the Time Trials. Having to play each track once to unlock N.Tropy's ghost and having to beat it to unlock N.Oxide's ghost may sound like a chore, however, it is not. The first one can be used as a reconnaissance run to refresh the track. Then the N.Tropy one can be used as the warm-up. What does suck is that if you have a better time already by the time you unlock Oxide's ghost, you still have to race him. I did have him beat beforehand for like 75% of tracks, so it did feel like a waste of time.

In terms of time spent in each track it went as low as the track length, since I beat a lot of them first try, and up to about 6 minutes. Also for some (like Hot Air Skyway and Thunder Struck) I did restart even though I was gonna beat it because I didn't like how it looked, lol. I have to note that I did spend about 10 minutes of the no ghost trial in Sewer Speedway developing a strategy to guarantee the shortcut.

After N.Oxide another time trial ghost is unlocked. The times for that one are ridiculous! It isn't unbeatable, sure, but you would need to drive perfectly, utilizing all of the advanced techniques to have any chance at all. If the Platinum required beating those I would give it a difficulty of 15/10. Suffices to say that I wouldn't have even tried it.

 

I completed all the trials on the same sitting (although I did take a break to eat something and take a shower) and I recorded each race against N.Oxide individually, from about halfway through the loading screen until I selected "Change Level" after the successful attempt, although I did take away 15 seconds from the time spent to somewhat account for that. Here's the detailed list, along with what driving style I used (the timestamps are for the video at the end and can also be found on the video description if checked straight on Youtube):

 

Spoiler

 

Timestamp | Track | Time spent trying in MM:SS | Driving Style

00:00 | Crash Cove | 4:14 | Speed

01:37 | Mystery Caves | 2:33 | Drift

04:00 | Sewer Speedway | 3:01 | Drift

06:03 | Roo's Tubes | 1:49 | Speed

07:42 | Slide Coliseum | 2:16 | Drift

09:59 | Turbo Track | 2:15 | Drift

12:12 | Coco Park | 3:58 | Speed

13:55 | Tiger Temple | 2:48 | Speed

15:59 | Papu's Pyramid | 4:07 | Drift

17:59 | Dingo Canyon | 3:45 | Drift

19:56 | Polar Pass | 3:10 | Drift

22:53 | Tiny Arena | 3:50 | Drift

26:39 | Dragon Mines | 4:35 | Drift

28:30 | Blizzard Bluff | 1:48 | Drift

30:13 | Hot Air Skyway | 5:06 | Drift

33:10 | Cortex Castle | 2:45 | Drift

35:47 | N.Gin Labs | 4:13 | Drift

38:26 | Oxide Station | 3:56 | Drift

42:00 | Inferno Island | 2:32 | Speed

43:55 | Jungle Boogie | 1:45 | Drift

45:33 | Clockwork Wumpa | 4:41 | Drift

48:04 | Android Alley | 2:59 | Drift

51:00 | Electron Avenue | 4:08 | Drift

54:48 | Deep Sea Driving | 5:19 | Drift

57:06 | Thunder Struck | 6:00 | Drift

59:56 | Tiny Temple | 5:08 | Drift

1:01:56 | Meteor Gorge | 1:58 | Drift

1:03:55 | Barin Ruins | 2:03 | Drift

1:06:03 | Out of Time | 3:30 | Drift

1:08:54 | Assembly Lane | 5:05 | Drift

1:11:57 | Hyper Spaceway | 2:50 | Drift

 

 

I'm not gonna say it's easy, because it isn't, I did have to play for real for at least half of those. I think one big mistake people make when they start playing this game is going through Adventure Mode on Easy. I did it on Medium because I didn't want to have to relearn the game straight on Hard, but I did finish the few miscellaneous trophies I had left on Easy. On Easy the AI doens't even try, at all... They go soooooo slow it's insulting. By getting used to that people probably get complacent and don't practice their drift skills while going through the Adventure Mode, so then they get hit by a bucket of cold water right away when they try their first Time Trial.

One of the advanced techniques that was super useful to keep boosts going was U-Turn (Ultra Turn). This technique requires pressing diagonal back to the left or right along with the brake to do sharp turns without losing speed. Since I was playing with the stick I couldn't do this reliably. To solve that I used the console's Accessibility options to change L2 do Down on the D-Pad. With that I could simulate I was pressing down and then simply turn with the stick. That helped a lot to easily pull this technique off.

Another bit of advice I would share is to not be afraid of jump turning. Even without any advanced technique inputs, plain ass jump turning can help a lot with not hitting walls, which is imperative since touching anything takes away all speed and all the boost reserves built from drift boosting.

 

If I was asked which are the hardest tracks, I'd say:

 

1) Dragon Mines: The time is fairly strict and the spiral turn can be a bitch without boost built and U-turning.

2) Crash Cove: The time is pretty strict, so keeping the boost from the boost pads at the end of the lap and drifting close to walls is important.

3) Deep Sea Driving: The saws at the end ruin the track. It's not that hard because the time is pretty lenient. I think you can hit the saws every lap and still make it. I still found it super annoying.

 

Without much else to say, here is the compilation of my wins against N.Oxides times for all the Platinum-required tracks:

 

Popping the Platinum by completing the Time Trials. Please excuse the manly choice of character and kart color ;). A few recommendations to watch: Hot Air Skyway, N.Gin Labs, Cortex Castle, Electron Avenue and Tiny Temple (timestamps in the spoiler tag above).

Edited by AndresLionheart
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Need for Speed is a joke nowadays because of how the franchise has been treated over the years. Gran Turismo is pretty solid, but I'm just not into that kind of stuff.

 

I never played the original Crash racing game. I did play Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart 64 much like you, in the same time period (late 1990s, early 2000s) and had a blast with them.

 

Wanted to get this for a good while now, but can't trust Activision. Not sure if the microtransactions really make much of a difference or not.

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12 hours ago, Spaz said:

Need for Speed is a joke nowadays because of how the franchise has been treated over the years. Gran Turismo is pretty solid, but I'm just not into that kind of stuff.

 

I never played the original Crash racing game. I did play Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart 64 much like you, in the same time period (late 1990s, early 2000s) and had a blast with them.

 

Wanted to get this for a good while now, but can't trust Activision. Not sure if the microtransactions really make much of a difference or not.

The last Need for Speed I played was Most Wanted on PS2, it was a time of my life that I found the car tuning kinda cool.

The last Gran Turismo I played was 2 on PS1. I do thank this game for one thing, and that thing is teaching me about racing lines.

 

You don't have to worry about the microtransactions. I touched about that on my thoughts, but since is long and I know not many are gonna read it, I will quote myself:

14 hours ago, AndresLionheart said:

What I don't appreciate is the stupid way to unlock stuff. Collecting coins and buying unlockables is a fine progression loop, but that goes out the fucking window when anything you want to unlock is tied to a stupid Fortnite-style shop... Who the fuck at Activision had this brilliant idea? Sell the stupid coins if you want but let me buy what I want when I want. The prices are not high enough to the point where you couldn't get something by playing normally before the rotation changes, so the system doesn't make sense.

The whole idea of limited time items is to trick people into buying currency for something before it goes away. If the time is so long that you can easily grind the coins in a few races the whole thing is pointless.

Yeah, I was kinda mad. One extra thing I would like to add is that the game never tries to sell you the coins. You have to go out of your way looking for the place to buy them. It's right there in the storefront but it doens't flash or anything like that to call your attention. That's very important to me because I hate when anyone or anything is trying to sell me something.

 

It's a pretty nice challenge for anyone into kart racers.

Edited by AndresLionheart
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Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 5/10

Time to Platinum: 10 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

Last year I finally went back and completed the first Yooka-Laylee game. I didn't like it, but I wanted to complete it anyway. It was one of those rare cases where I complete a game I don't like.

This game came out of nowhere. I have played and finished Donkey Kong Country 1 and 3 even though I'm not that much its kind of platformer. I've heard good things about this one mimicking the DKC games so I wanted to give it a go.

 

If anything, it starts off in an original way. Instead of starting in some safe, easy are, this game throws you right into the final stage right away. Of course you are supposed to lose, but that doesn't mean itn's unbeatable at that point, it's just extremely difficult. I got to 4% of the stage then I feel and lost, lol.

The whole point of the game is going around rescuing Bees that are going to be your defense when actually attempting the final stage. You can go and try it at any point, as many times as you want, though.

 

The overworld connecting all the levels is very neatly designed. There are secrets all over the place. Also, doing certain things on the overworld can alter the levels, making them into a completely different one. The T.W.I.T. coins hidden in each level can be tricky to find, too.

 

The music is kinda weird, though. Most of the time it's great, but then you can get some tracks that feel like they glitched and are playing on top of each other. I didn't get what the creative idea on those was.

 

In the previous game there was a lot of characterization thanks to the amount of dialog between all the characters. This time around there isn't much dialog, but they are always referencing events from the previous game, even calling it straight up "the previous game". The game is definitely self aware, and it doesn't care. Some of the dialog can be pretty funny. For example, there was this market shopping cart that had built its own sand house. When you destroy it to get to one of the levels he gets all sad and this is what he then says:

 

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I wonder if Nintendo would have allowed something like that if this was a 1st Party game of theirs...

 

Then there was this box with a face that is mad at you because he considers it rude of you to be pushing around boxes to solve puzzles. When you bring a box close to him to press a button it breaks and he gets all sad. He rushes in, calling the box "Mark" and fulfilling its last wish of pressing the button for it.

Yeah, you are kind of an asshole in this game. It kinda made me feel a little bad, lol.

 

The Tonics are mostly a complete waste of space, tbh. Most of them add wacky effects just for fun, but the ones that alter the gameplay have modifiers that affect the amount of Quills (needed to buy said Tonics) you get at the end of each level. Anything that helps you reduces the amount, making them basically useless since you need those Quills to unlock everything. Most of the hindering ones make the game almost unplayable, so the bonus in Quills is not even worth it either. I ended up only using one called Quillsplosion (makes enemies drop Quills when killed. No effect on the Quill multiplier) and Quill Magnet (attracts close Quills. Again, no effect ont he multiplier).

 

Most of the game is fairly easy. That's why so many people get struck hard when trying to beat the titular Impossible Lair. That place is no joke. Even though I'm pretty good at platformers I barely finished it on my first try with only 5 Bees to spare (from the 48, which means I took 43 hits).

In the last patch they added checkpoints to it, but you still need to perform fairly well, even with those checkpoints.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

Not much to say here. Pretty much get everything, except for the one Tonic that is unlocked by beating the Impossible Lair without the aid of the bees!. If the Platnium required that one, we would be talking about a 9/10 difficulty here, maybe even a 10/10.

 

Tonics need to be found and then bought. By the time every stage is done there are still lots of them to buy, so grinding Quills is needed. Thankfully is a very short grind. What I did was go to Stage 3, its second version, use Spotlight, Googly Eyes, Less Checkmates, and Quillsplosion, and go all the way to the left. There, enemies spawn indefinitely so you can keep killing them to get 5-6 Quills each time. Since those Tonics add up to a multiplier of 3x I added up all the Quills I was gonna need and divided them by 3, then got that amount and finished the stage to get all I needed. It took about 15 minutes to get the 14674 I needed. Since you can't see shit with Spotlight all you have to do is cross the Checkmate when done grinding to "bank" the Quills and then go die. After 5 or so deaths the game will let you go skip to the next Checkmate. From there is a short way to the end of the level)

 

But, of course, the "platinum breaker" is the Impossible Lair. In the current update it isn't as bad anymore, but it still requires some skill. It kinda sucks though that the original Impossible Lair isn't accessible anymore. Now you can only do the checkpoints version with the Bees, or the ridiculous version with no bees at all. Originally there was a "no checkpoints with bees" version, which is what I wanted to do. Technically I ended up doing that anyway, but I did have the peace of mind that if I died I could pick it up from the latest checkpoint, so I wasn't stressed about the chance of losing, which could have made me nervous and play worse.

 

Anyway, here is how my crappy run went. I started extremely bad by getting hit by the very first enemy, lol, but everything worked up in the end. I took so much damage form the boss fights, though D=

 

Popping the Platinum by beating the "Impossible Lair"

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Persona 5 Royal

Game Difficulty: 3/10

Platinum Difficulty: 2/10

Time to Platinum: 152 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

It's been a long time coming. I have pushed this one back several times before because I was not going to do the Platinum. Since I knew it was a long game with lots of missable stuff, and that it required playing it twice, I was simply gonna play it completely blind on an alt account just to experience it. That was what I thought based on the original release.

One day I decided to check if Royal's trophy list was different. Holy heck was it different... Not only were lots of different little things streamlined game-wise, the whole trophy list was made leagues more simple. With that in mind I bought Royal digitally since it was on sale (and because the physical version is overpriced due to there not being a regular physical version, only the special one).

 

This is the first Persona game I play. It was definitely a difference experience from most other JRPGs I played, and I played a lot of them. Every little corner of this game oozes with style: the characters, the music, the menus, everything.

Right of the bat I was hooked since the game starts of in present time and then transitions into a flashback that takes most of the bulk of the game.

The balance between social life and dungeon (called Palaces here) exploration is spread well enough that you are always getting kinda tired of one when it's time for the other. Both of these sections are wholly enjoyable on their own rights.

 

The game story is set-up in chapters that give enough time to develop antagonists and allies so that when it comes time for the resolution of said act it is a satisfying conclusion.

Most of these stories are down to earth, so it's easy to relate to them since these events are things that are not that unusual in real life. Although, of course, it's solved in a fantasy way.

What I like of the way that Palaces work is that what they are is explained in a way that makes the suspension of disbelief so easy to happen. It's mostly about the cognitive science and philosophy, how we normally understand the human mind. How all this is set-up is intriguing and certainly appreciated.

I won't go into detail about each story arc because discovering all this game has to offer has to be done as blind as possible. Experiencing it fresh, learning how the world works, speculating, and drawing conclusions was a big part of the experience for me.

Palace exploration is really fun as well. These places are really big, with paths that wind back and forth, leading to shortcuts to previous areas and such. The design of most of them was on point, with the ones that were a 9/10 being very close to also being a 10.

 

Battles are turn-based, however it adds a pretty fun twist thanks to the importance of hitting weaknesses and landing technical hits (attacking an enemy affected by a status ailment with a specific attribute, like using wind on an enemy who is burning).

When one of those hits is landed the enemy falls down, giving whats is know as a "1 more" which is basically another turn. The cool thing about this is that you can pass that extra turn to a teammate, giving them a boost in damage, to which then they can down another enemy and pass it to someone else. The 4th one to get the turn gets a massive attack buff and can use a skill for free. Since you can't redown the same enemy you need to plan ahead because not everyone can hit any weakness. This allows to finish battles before enemies even move.

Whats even cooler is that to pass the turn the character walks by their teammate all cool and shit and gives them a high five. Yet more things in favor of the stylish presentation.

 

When it comes to regular life exploration there are lots of places to check. Just walking around and checking what the city had to offer I stumbled upon things like an old guy close to my house selling a used DVD player, which then I found the use for when I found a video store in Shibuya which rented movies. There may not be a big ass map like in other JRPGs, but that's okay because there is no need for it. After all, you are living a regular life in the city. People don't go to far away places every day, lol.

 

With so much social stuff, a very important part is the way to interact with other characters. Along party members there are a bunch of other NPCs to build a relationship with. It's not just about learning about them, it's also about getting passive abilities from them to aid in Palace exploration and daily life. Each one of them goes through their own side story arc, so seeing them until the end is a lot of fun.

You can also romance almost all of the female characters. Since I have good taste I went with Ann Takamaki, who is the obvious choice =P. I could also see the case for those who are into Futaba, though. You can romance several at once but that probably ends in disaster way later during St. Valentine's day, lol.

One thing that I appreciated about romancing a girl is that the interactions with her do not end with the last scene that maxes the relationship. After that there are a few special dates here and there which help to sell the idea that you are dating her. That's something that usually doesn't happen in other games with relationships that I play, like Fire Emblem.

 

They even made going to school interesting. You are sometimes asked questions in class, which then are used during the final exams of the semester. You can obviously cheat thanks to the internet, but I still tried on my own. They sometimes touch on topics that are kinda interesting, like when they talked about Cpt. William Kidd (who's story sounds like was used as the basis for Gold Roger in One Piece), and the founder of Hawaii, King Kamehameha.

 

Now the music, the freaking music. Just like with the game itself, it's very different from other JRPGs. It has this jazzy feel to it, making the style of everything else even more stylish! I especially loved "Life will Change", the theme used when going for the owner of a Palace. It's soooo "anime moment of getting the upper hand on a strong enemy".

 

 

This game is also sooo long! My long playtime may sound like I was grinding or doing some other kind of repetitive content, but no, that time is all actual gameplay. Toward the very end I was kinda out of things to do during the day since I maxed out the relationships with everyone, but that was a very small portion of it.

 

I lived in Persona 5's version of Tokyo for the last 26 days, and I completely loved it. Experiencing what this game has to offer is comparable to what it would feel to play an Anime. The use of cognitive science, philosophy, and every day things, like social media and mass media, makes the world presented immersive and thought provoking.

I may try one of the previous titles at some point, but I will mostly be looking forward to seeing what they come up with for Persona 6 whenever that happens.

 

Thoughts on the Platinum

 

As I mentioned in the introduction, this Platinum was made exceedingly simpler in comparison to the OG list. You only need to max out a single relationship and your social stats, most of the rest of the trophies are one-offs of story related stuff or using a certain feature for the first time. Because of this I don't really have much to say about the road to the Platinum.

I did end up maxing out ALL relationships just to see the end of everyone's story. At no point did it feel like I was wasting my time or anything. Every minute spent I was having fun.

The only thing that wasn't much fun was gathering all of the stamps in the procedural generated dungeon, Mementos. I was doing that until I checked the trophy about the stamps and it turned out that it wasn't about getting all of them, it was about simply maxing out one of the categories of buffs that the stamps are used for. When I realized that I only went for the stamps that were in my way.

 

There are some important decisions to be made to not get a bad ending, but the game let's you save before the cutscenes involving those decisions happen. So if you fuck up it isn't much of a loss of time. The choices are very obvious, too.

 

Having a simple Platinum actually helps a gem like this. Being required to play the game twice, or using a guide from the get-go would ruin the whole experience.

 

Who knows, maybe one day I will go back to the OG version and get the harder Platinum. Not for a long time though, I need to play some simple, short games for a while, lol.

 

I did record the final boss fight and all of the cutscenes until the Platinum popped. The whole thing took a little over 3 hours. What's funny about it is that the first hour of that is the final boss. The other 2 hours are all cutscenes (and very little walking around for some more conversations with each characters) before the game finally ends!! I couldn't believe how long that took when I checked back the video, lol. Because of this, and not wanting to spoil the final boss and ending for others, I won't be uploading the Platinum pop.

Edited by AndresLionheart
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Castlevania Anniversary Collection

Game Difficulty: 5/10

Completion Difficulty: 4/10

Time to Complete: 15 hours

 

Thoughts on the game

 

I originally wasn't gonna buy this because it didn't have a Platinum. One day I saw it for sale at a time when I wanted something simple to play after I was done with Persona 5. I also wanted to play a few of the games included, although not all of them.

 

Before this I had only played the original Castlevania on NES. From the games on this collection I only cared about the original, 3, 4 and Bloodlines. I did have to play the first one on Gameboy because it has no passwords, but for the rest of them (2nd one on Gameboy, Kid Dracula and Castlevania 2) I skipped as much as I could.

 

So, how was each game that I played:

 

- Castlevania: Still a fun game. It can get a bit tough at times but it is never too annoying. It would be a bit harder if I didn't cheese Death with Holy Water though. That boss is pretty difficult with the amount of things to dodge with the given mobility, or lack thereof. Other than that the game is mostly fair and has a nice progression in difficulty. The iconic music is also a strong point.

 

- Castlevania III - Dracula's Curse: Gameplay-wise is pretty similar to the original, but with the addition of other playable character that have their own strengths and weaknesses.

In my actual playthrough I kept Grant the whole way. He can freely maneuver while mid-air, has a higher jump, is faster and can climp on walls and ceilings, but as his low points he has lower defense, short range attacks and low damage.

What makes this one not as good is that they went too far into the difficult side. Stages are more difficult overall, and checkpoints are farther apart. On top of that finding health recovering items is also waaaay less common. AVGN wasn't kidding when he said that it felt like an endurance round. I was indeed begging for pork chops fairly often.

Still, the biggest sin this game commits is not having a freaking checkpoint before the final boss! If you die to it (which I think is the toughest iteration of Dracula from the games I played in this collection) you are sent 3 or 4 screens before the final boss arena. And on the way there is a pit you have to cross in which you can easily die. It's also especially easy to die on this fight because on the last phase sections of the floor float around as platforms to reach the boss' face, but in exchange they leave holes which are instant death.

 

Good game, but too hard for its own good.

 

- Castlevania: The Adventure: I knew this one was trash. It's slow, clunky (it ate up inputs often), has no sub weapons and shitty design that does not complement it's crappy movement speed and jumping. If it wasn't for save states I would have been so frustrated playing this one... I'm actually not sure how benevolent the checkpoints are since I abused those save states, but I'm gonna guess that on Game Over is back to the beginning of the stage (and there are only 4...).

 

- Castlevania: Bloodlines: Going into the 16-bit territory, the graphics and sound quality make a big leap. I played through this one as Eric Lecarde because I knew he could attack in most directions. On top of that later into the playthrough I found out that holding down let's him do a high jump which also deals damage on the way up. Difficulty-wise it felt just right, I never felt like I was being robbed.

 

Good thing I played as Eric because the whip dude... ahmm, I don't remember his name, is so boring and basic.

 

- Super Castlevania IV: The one I was most interested in. It's without a doubt the easiest Castlevania game I've played so far, and that isn't a bad thing. What makes this one easier is the fact that Simon is so much better in every aspect. You can attack in all directions, you can jump straight on stair, the whip is long as fuck and you can freely move in mid-air. All of these things, coupled with overall easier stages, makes this one a more pleasant time. At least for the first half of the game...

 

The latter portion of this game doesn't play around as much. I'm not sure about the frequency of checkpoints on the first half since I didn't die that much, but in this second half I could feel the pain with each death... At no moment it felt unfair though, so even while it may have gotten a bit frustrating at times, it was all my fault for getting impatient and rushing it.

 

The only aspect I find a little bit disappointing is the final boss. The continue puts you right there on his door, however it is by far the easiest one. He even drops food sometimes when destroying one of his projectiles. The last phase of the fight kicks in the main theme as you are finishing him off, giving it an epic finale feeling, even when it was easy af, lol.

 

Here is my complete playthrough of this one.

 

 

Thoughts on the Completion

 

I mean... It's just beating each game once, and beating the ones with extra characters once more for each one. That could have made it annoying but both games that require this (Castlevania III and Bloodlines) have passwords that lets you skip to the final stage.

 

Other than that there isn't much to say about it.

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